One User Interface to Rule Them All—And It's Microsoft's

The early details on Windows 8 came out to mixed reviews last week, but to PM contributor Mark Wilson, there's a much bigger picture here: Through a total cross-platform reboot, it will be Microsoft—not Apple—that will unify its devices with single, elegant user interface.

One year ago, if you said that one company would be the first to unify desktops, tablets, cellphones and set-top boxes within a single, beautiful, intuitive and spartan design philosophy—using a conglomeration of keyboards, voice, gestures, or whatever it took —it had to be Apple. It was the computer company synonymous with design. It was the company that had just launched the world's first great tablet using the same interface from its ridiculously successful smartphone.

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It had to be Apple. But it wasn't, and it won't be. In 2012, with the expected launch of Windows 8 (the key details of which were revealed last week), Microsoft will be the tortoise to Apple's hare. Where Apple is reworking remnants of aging designs to unify its desktops and laptops with its mobile devices, Microsoft is starting fresh by rebooting its entire franchise at once. How did Microsoft—yes, stodgy, "I'm a PC" Microsoft—pull it off?

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Metro

The Metro design language is now synonymous with Microsoft. It's that multipaned block of buttons and images that debuted in Windows 7 phones last year. It's where the "Start" button takes you in Windows 8. It's even the next design for Xbox 360's dashboard. And it's the reason that Microsoft will be the first to unify the digital experience, making it feel the same no matter what screen you're working on. On phones, tablets, desktops, and even your TV, everything Microsoft will match in Metro.

Microsoft has been able to do this through a fundamental difference between its user experience and Apple's. Anyone who's used an iPad or iPhone is familiar with the icon setup of Apple iOS: it shows you an icon for each of your growing muutitude of apps, and you touch the icon to launch the app.

But a core Metro design philosophy is what the company calls "content not chrome"— boxes of pure media instead of shiny buttons. Metro rips out the UI (user interface) middleman and simply shows you your friends' photos, tweets, and other content. While Apple offers you a link to your stocks, Metro simply gives you a ticker. The content replaces icons so well that you start to wonder: Why did we ever make these silly icons in the first place?

The Metro approach isn't only about making a better UI; it's also about making one that translates with ease from device to device. Blocks of media are platform agnostic: Video is video, fonts are fonts, and images are images. Their chunky nature makes them both readable on smartphones as one TV screen, and just as clickable with a touchscreen, mouse or even a keyboard's directional pad.

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Growing Pains

I don't mean to say Windows 8 and Metro are near-perfect, fully realized systems. While content is platform-agnostic, the different ways that you access content on different devices means that you'll unavoidably encounter hiccups in trying to unify all platforms. For instance, a lot of early reviews have fairly pointed out that Windows 8 has a bit of a split personality, as you'll sometimes need to hop between Metro and the familiar, traditional Windows desktop.

I've noticed a few oddities with the Microsoft UI. I'm expected to perform certain "tabletisms," like flicking up the login screen rather than clicking a button. (This motion is very strange with a mouse, for sure, and it always will be.) Yet I can't perform other tabletisms that I naturally anticipate, like dragging Metro left to right with my mouse as if it's my finger.

But a gadget-style review of Windows 8 misses the larger picture: Microsoft has taken a leap past everyone in unifying its universe of devices. Plus, its single interface is going to get smoother. That aging Windows 95-style desktop that still comes with Windows 8 is slower and more cumbersome than Metro's instantaneous app switching. To me, it's a Windows power user's security blanket for deep system tweaks, just like DOS was up to Windows 3.5. But how many us work at the command line level today? The dual personality won't last.

Failure to Launch

Apple's own cross-device attempts seem much clunkier. There's LaunchPad, Apple's first attempt to put the iOS SpringBoard interface on their desktop Macs, which run the OS X operating system. But LaunchPad is nothing more than an icon that links a sea of icons. Sorting countless stacks of icons is pretty much the antithesis of an efficient desktop. Sure, I can organize a bit by snuggling these icons into folders. But I'm left with the same folders-inside-folders UI we've been using for 20 years—the one that we're trying so hard to shake.

On a laptop, LaunchPad is fundamentally awkward because it never feels quite right in wide screen. Remember, while many iPhone apps work in landscape mode, the iPhone's icon-laden menus are locked in portrait mode at all times. The iPad does support a landscape dashboard, but iOS itself clearly wasn't designed with wide screen in mind. Shoehorning it on to a Mac with an even larger, wider screen can't change that.

But it's not just LaunchPad. Consider the cross-platform evolution of just one of Apple's design elements, CoverFlow, the feature that lets you flick through the album covers of your music. It started as a way to browse music in iOS, and it felt great. Then it was incorporated into iTunes, AppleTV and even into OS X itself as a way to view folders and media. This was a good sign; Apple was unifying on the small scale. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Apple ditched CoverFlow (sort of). You can still find CoverFlow in Lion, but it's now extinct from iTunes and AppleTV.

CoverFlow is a minor feature, but a telling example. What it really means is that Apple still can't quite decide on a single way to structure the simplest of experiences, watching movies and listening to music, on more than two of its platforms.

All Together Now

LaunchPad is lousy for desktops and laptops. It's not as versatile as Metro, and iOS needs to be redesigned if it's going to drive a desktop. Piecemeal aesthetics like CoverFlow will never truly unify the Apple user experience either. Despite matching fonts and animations, using AppleTV is a totally different experience from using an iPhone, which is a totally different experience from using OS X. Apple may talk about OS X being the core of iOS, but think about it: The company is still differentiating the product line at the most fundamental of levels. OS X and iOS are different operating systems. They're different downloads.

Windows 8 is Windows 8, on a laptop or a tablet. There's solid speculation that Windows 8 may even power phones (I think it will). And in the one Microsoft platform that won't run Windows 8 (the Xbox 360), Metro's strict design philosophy fills in the gaps.

No, Metro hasn't yet killed the desktop, and its miscellaneous control schemes are occasionally quite confusing. But through the current adjustment period, as we figure out just what manifestation of computing will dominate humanity's future, I'm willing to suffer the occasional control oddity in the interest of a single, predictable UI. I'm not used to a screen that has no "click X to close button" today. But tomorrow I will be—and I'll know that principle applies to every Microsoft device I use.